In his suit, Larry Jacobs, now 48, accused top fire officials of a racially motivated humiliation campaign starting in 2005, in which he was kept apart and told not to eat with or speak to firefighters. He also said he was relegated to hard labor in lieu of training for nearly a year.

The goal, his suit said, was to humiliate him into dropping out of the department.

The city and department officials defended the menial labor as being not unusual for injured rookies. They denied race had anything to do with it.

According the city attorney’s motion to dismiss the case, Jacobs was known as “Conspiracy Theory” by his fellow rookies and never suffered financially from his supposed mistreatment.

Jacobs’ account of abuse got an unlikely boost from veteran firefighters who witnessed what one of them called a deliberate effort to get Jacobs and two other African American rookie firefighters to drop out of the 29-member rookie class in 2005.

While Jacobs persevered and is still in the department, the two others in the class gave up.

Years of abuse alleged

According to the legal filings, Tom Siragusa – head of training at the time and currently an assistant chief – declared to his staff at a meeting that the training program had gone soft and that more recruits needed to flunk to restore the program’s reputation among other fire departments.

Jacobs – who was in the first class Siragusa commanded in May 2005 – alleged that he was subjected to three years of abuse to get him to flunk. He said the campaign began when he questioned why a training official had failed him on a knot-tying test – a test he ultimately passed by tying the exact same knot.

By that time, he had passed 67 out of 75 tests – scoring 100 percent on many of them – but had logged so many deficiencies in the knot-tying category that he was on the verge of flunking out.

After belatedly telling officials about having injured his shoulder while hoisting a ladder, Jacobs was taken out of training and put on light duty. The city attorney’s office said Jacobs was being investigated for reporting his injury too late under department regulations and could have been dismissed, but he stayed on.

Instead, Jacobs was put to work, first painting outside in near-100-degree heat and becoming what one fire official declared was “probably the highest-paid janitor in the city,” Jacobs’ suit said.

He was posted at the department’s Treasure Island training academy – but not to be trained. Here, Jacobs said, he was segregated – ordered not to speak to his fellow rookies or dine with them or other fire officials. He ate in his car.

Manual labor

Over 10 months, Jacobs said, he was provided only a toothbrush to do cleaning. His first assignment was the 7-by-6-foot kitchen floor – a job that took eight hours. He then used the brush to scrub clean the bathroom toilets and lockers.

Fire officials, according to the suit, took to calling him “house boy.” When he was not scrubbing, Jacobs said, he was told to weed and clean the academy’s 8-acre grounds – a job for which a private crew had been paid $200,000 before budget cuts. Despite his shoulder injury, Jacobs said, he was made to singlehandedly shovel up loose gravel and debris. He tended to the staff’s barbecue, groomed the baseball diamond and organized the clothing depot.

Even after he was judged fit by doctors, he was told there was no spot for him to be trained and he continued manual labor. Even after he completed his academy training, the abuse continued, according to his suit.

For instance, fire officials ordered that he submit to back-to-back drug tests. And when he passed those, the suit said, they made him repeatedly take a test to prove his ability to prepare a fire hose for use.

The trouble was, according to the suit, they would tie the hose in knots and take apart critical pieces before giving Jacobs 10 minutes to prepare the hose.

Other firefighters did not have to untangle or reassemble the hose in similar tests, the suit said. He failed the 10-minute test four times. Only on the fifth time – during a test that was witnessed by an observer from the Black Firefighters Association group armed with a video camera – did Jacobs pass the test.

Supervisors to decide

Jacobs blamed Chief Joanne Hayes-White for failing to stop the harassment campaign. While the chief did intervene, the improvements in his treatment were only temporary and the abuse soon resumed, according to the suit.

The settlement has been approved by the fire commission and awaits final action by the Board of Supervisors.

Jaxon Van Derbeken is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tentative-settlement-in-black-SF-firefighter-s-4795725.php

When San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener went before the Planning Commission in November proposing to attach a deadline to some California Environmental Quality Act appeals, he was met by 90 minutes of strong opposition from public commenters and commissioners, who told him to come back with a better plan done with more public outreach.

Thirty-four amendments later, Wiener will be back at the commission Thursday hoping to change an appeals process that he calls unpredictable and chaotic.

“If you’re not a land-use lawyer, it’s completely opaque. It’s unclear even when the deadline is to file the appeal,” Wiener said.

San Francisco is one of few cities where smaller projects that don’t require environmental impact reports aren’t subject to a set deadline for appeals to the Board of Supervisors. Wiener wants to establish a deadline so that any appeal of the state environmental quality act would be made within 30 days of a project’s approval.

Currently the city attorney determines on a case-by-case basis whether an appeal is timely.

“The bottom line is we’re not taking away anyone’s right to appeal the CEQA decision,” said Planning Director John Rahaim, who supports Wiener’s efforts. “What this does is establish some very basic rules around deadline appeals.”

Simplifying process

Gabriel Metcalf, the executive director of San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, said that the city’s planning code is thousands of pages long and that Wiener’s legislation would simplify things without resulting in material changes for bigger projects.

“We have a system that is designed for maximum confusion and maximum frustration,” he said. “The amendments we’re talking about here would help clear up a little bit of the confusion and a little bit of the frustration for a small set of projects.”

Wiener stresses that his legislation is focused on smaller projects that can least afford to have an unpredictable environmental process, as opposed to large developers who can afford to wage long, costly legal battles.

“This isn’t about the Parkmerceds, the Treasure Islands and America’s Cups of the world,” he said. “This is the much larger category ranging from small park projects, to pedestrian projects, to people doing work on their homes.”

But some groups wary of development say they do believe the legislation puts unreasonable constraints on the appeals process.

“Scott Wiener’s legislation puts forward a time frame that will hamper our ability to effectively file an appeal,” said Michelle Myers, the director of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay chapter.

Eric Brooks, an organizer for the Our City activist group that opposed past efforts by supervisors to streamline the CEQA process, said he also shares Myers’ concern about a provision in Wiener’s legislation that would allow some appeals to be heard before a board committee instead of the full Board of Supervisors.

“Basically what the legislation is doing is taking some small problems in the current law that do need some fixing and using them as a vehicle to completely gut the public’s ability to use CEQA to support San Francisco and its neighborhoods from bad real estate developments,” Brooks said.

Miss appeal window

He also worried that project opponents would miss the appeal window if the legislation is approved.

Brooks and Myers said they are working with Supervisor Jane Kim on alternative CEQA legislation that would involve the full board in appeals and push back the appeal deadlines, which Wiener said would make the process worse than it already is.

Other neighborhood leaders say they welcome clear rules for appeals on smaller projects. Raymond Holland, president of the Planning Association for the Richmond recalled that when ATT started adding utility boxes on sidewalks in his neighborhoods a few years ago, there was a debate over whether it was too late to appeal.

“It was real unclear when the decision of the exemption was made and secondly when the clock started to run,” he said. “It’s been sort of a free-for-all whenever you have an appeal, so I think codifying makes sense.”

Once the Planning Commission makes its recommendation Thursday, there will be several more public hearings before the legislation is voted on by the Board of Supervisors.

Neal J. Riley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: nriley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @realdealneal

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Supervisor-s-2nd-try-to-change-environmental-4352827.php

The San Francisco Law Library sued the city Wednesday, alleging that officials would be violating the City Charter if they fail to provide it with adequate space to house its 250,000 law books.

The issue has been simmering for years and is coming to a head as the city is preparing to close the War Memorial Veterans Building across from City Hall in May for renovations.

The Veterans Building has housed the law library since 1995, when the library was moved out of City Hall for renovations after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. It was supposed to be a temporary solution, but the law library has remained there ever since.

Now its board of directors fears it will be homeless, despite San Francisco’s charter mandating that the city provide adequate space for the law library near the courthouse.

“For nearly two decades, we have tried to work with city officials to identify the appropriate space and facilities for the San Francisco Law Library,” Kurt Melchior, a partner at Nossaman LLP and president of the law library’s board of directors, said in a statement. “In 2013, it is beyond belief that San Francisco – a city which routinely seeks to protect its most vulnerable populations – is set to abandon such a vital public benefit.”

Melchior in November warned of a lawsuit, saying: “I’m shocked at the way the city has behaved. It’s a plain violation of the City Charter. We need to find a place right now.”

City Attorney Dennis Herrera‘s office declined to comment on the pending litigation, its standard practice.

The library, established in 1865 as the first law library in the state, is allotted 14,310 square feet in a building where sunlight streaming through the skylights has warped some books, Melchior said, and buckets used to catch leaking rain are scattered throughout the stacks. Library officials say two-thirds of their collection is in storage because they don’t have enough space.

Their lawsuit contends the library needs at least 30,000 square feet of space, and it seeks a court order preventing the city from evicting the law library from the Veterans Building until it provides adequate space elsewhere.

- John Coté

An apolitical new job: Last we heard from Christina Olague, she was leaving the Board of Supervisors after losing her bid for a four-year term to London Breed. And frankly, she didn’t sound too devastated about it.

“I’m happy to be going back to a quieter life,” she said shortly after the bruising campaign, though she had no details on what that quieter life would entail. “I want something very low key. A very slip-under-the-radar kind of job. A not-be-noticed-by-anybody-in-the-media kind of job.”

Well, we couldn’t let her off the hook that easily – and when we found out she had a new job, we did take notice. It’s as program assistant at Arriba Juntos, a Mission District nonprofit that promotes economic self-sufficiency through job training.

“It’s been very eye opening, and I’m just learning a lot,” Olague said, sounding downright chatty and upbeat compared with her tenure as supervisor. “I’m happy to be back in the community.”

Olague was appointed by Mayor Ed Lee in January 2012 to fill the District Five seat vacated by Ross Mirkarimi when he became sheriff. But when Olague voted in October to reinstate Mirkarimi as sheriff after the mayor suspended him for pleading guilty to a domestic violence-related misdemeanor, Lee stopped talking to his appointee.

And it doesn’t sound as if making amends with Olague was on Lee’s list of New Year’s resolutions. Asked if they’ve talked since she left office, Olague said, “No. Uh-uh,” and burst out laughing.

After a tough year where she faced a lot of criticism from progressives and moderates alike, Olague doesn’t sound eager to run for political office again anytime soon.

“Who knows?” she said. “In 30 years, when I’m 80, maybe I’ll run for something.”

- Heather Knight

E-mail: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SFCityInsider

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Law-Library-sues-city-over-book-space-4257558.php